Once you've installed Pirate Guild, the first thing you have to do is to go in your [Esc] / Gameplay / Artificial Life menu and enable the pirate guild item. It will allows you to setup this plugin the way you want.

The first thing to do when enabling Pirate Guild is to setup it the way you want.

It's your choice from total war to friendship with the Guild and the other pirates. If you already have a good fleet / empire, and want to “kill those damn guild ships to get good reward money”, I'd suggest to give it a go with a Guild Strength set at “Very High”, enable ADS, jumpdrive and attack on station, and set relations to Foe (for fun ;)). Newcomers, and quiet traders who only want to see battles from far afar should keep medium setting, with the pirates as your friends.

Played as a pirate, the most interesting settings may be to start neutral to the guild and friendly to the other pirates. ADS should be enabled as it triggers some news and missions in addition to the defense of the bases.

Debug Mode In debug mode you see a real time news-feed of what the Pirate Guild is doing. It also adds various cheat options in some ECS Dialogs. Everything the plugin does is also copied to a logfile (path: My Documents\Egosoft\X3TC\log08513.txt).

To replace the non modifiable communication system in X3, I have included an alternative system to communicate with pirate ships and stations through a hot-key. Once you've installed Pirate Guild for the first time, go to [controls] / [extensions], scroll down to [interface] and set a key for the ECS: Extended Comm. System command. This done, find a Pirate Base, target it and press the key to comm with it (at less than 25km).

This nice menu allows you to access to the Pirate News Network, ask for a raid (if you notoriety is high enough), pay your fine to turn back blue a pirate base, see your notoriety, and give things to the Guild. How the pilot/station will react depends on your rank and your overall reputation with the pirate faction. The basic communication options allow you to ask a ship for the location of the nearest pirate base, to ask for an escort, to surrender, and more. You're also able to help a pilot when he is attacked by the police or military forces. The ECS system is very important and it is used for all interactions between the player and the plugin, so you'd better get used to it ;)

1. You have to understand that this plugin won't change everything in the universe the second it's enabled. It can take up to several hours before the bases can buy enough ships and defenses to become a real threat. But you can be sure that they will. So, if the Guild doesn't like you, you'd better be prepared.
2. Pirate Guild wings can be deadly against most kind of ships. Ships are well equiped and sometimes overtuned. Even a 'small' group of 3 can be a real threat.
3. If you want to see some big battles, i'd suggest to also use the Race Response Fleet plugin from
4. If you piss off the Guild there will be repercussions, and do not hope to destroy a Guild's Stronghold or Fortress with a few M3 or M6 (especially with ADS). Those are now a real threat, especially against a young commercial empire with few capital ships. However you can pay tributes to the guild (and fines) to eventually make peace.
5. Over time, a bounty will appear on the head of some Pirate Guild ships. For a confirmed kill, you'll receive this bounty *and* the usual reward money from this plugin. Same applies to the ships destroying Pirate Guild assets. Such ships will appear in the mission list as soons as your are a member of the Guild. You'll need +15.000 reputation points toward the guild.

Your notoriety to the pirate guild and the other pirates can both be between -1.000.000 and 1.000.000 points. And you will be considered as Foe, Neutral or Friend to them as follows:

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| -1.000.000 < Foe < -10.000 < Neutral > +10.000 > Friend > +1.000.000 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

If you're under -10K, most pirate ships will spawn red. Between -10K and +10K it seems that they will spawn both blue and red. And over +10K they will mostly spawn blue. Some pirate ships will still spawn or turn red on you no matter what your notoriety is. Also,understand that ships won't magically change their attitude toward you as soon as you change your notoriety, it takes time.

This said, the plugin allows you to set your relationship with both the Pirate Guild and the other pirates (those spawned by the game engine).

For the standard pirates, it works as explained before. if you choose to set the pirates as friends, your initial notoriety will be set to +20K points, all pirate stations will be blue and all ships/stations will be turned blue ONE time by the plugin. If you set them as foes, your initial notoriety will be set to -20K points, all pirate ships set to red, but relationship to stations won't be affected. If you set neutral, the plugin won't touch the ships or stations. Afterward, in all cases the game engine will handle the job.

The Pirate Guild works on a separate level (like the corporations in X3TC). It has its own notoriety system between -1M and +1M. And this notoriety system is used to manage PG ships and all Pirate Bases (anarchy port, and factories are not concerned). Meaning that if you set the Guild as a Foe, all pirate bases will turn red on you and same goes for PG ships. Helping Guild ships, giving money or ships to pirate bases will increase your notoriety, attacking them will (of course) decrease it. Attacking non aligned won't affect your standing toward the guild. According to your standing toward the Guild, expect the following:

• You can turn incoming red pirate blue for free
• Some of the guild current targets (means bounty) have a blinking name in the sector map
• Basic Mission System
• Friendlier pirate attitude (discounts …)

• Guild AI won't attack you except red pirate bases
• Attacked PB will turn back blue after a while (you can still pay tribute)
• Guild patrol ships will protect your ships from enemies

• Guild AI will ignore you except red pirate bases
• PB that haven't been attacked should be friendly
• PB that have been attacked by you will ask you to pay a fine to turn back blue.

• Pirate Bases and Guild owned ships will turn red on you.
• Guild AI is allowed to target your ships and assets
• The only way of getting your reputation back is to give huge amount of money

A race can also be selected as the worst foe of the Pirate Guild, including the player. The Guild automatically targets the race who dealt the most damages to guild's assets. And when you fall in this category expect the following:

• Pirates Bases in range will target your assets in priority
• The Guild Galleon HQ will raid your sectors
• Pirate Guild patrol ships will attack you on sight.